Time
by delga
Summary: If you take the number of officers, divide it into fragments and then rebuild from a fraction of the whole, how many officers did you lose?" Spoilers for 3x05.


**Time**

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_"Maybe one day we'll sit on a beach and laugh about this" – Danny,3x05 _

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Fandom: Spooks

Category: Angst

Spoilers: 3x05

Summary: _"If you take the number of officers, divide it into fragments and then rebuild from a fraction of the whole, how many officers did you lose?"_

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Time is a funny thing – it pulls and snaps, picking at details, stretching them perhaps or shrinking them until they're nothing but freckles on a canvas that some fool decided to call life.

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The first year was hellish (stretched out, tight against knuckles that push into flesh, over and over and over) and tome was bitter. Danny couldn't sleep, couldn't eat or speak. One day was the same as the next, no matter what he did or where he was.

The apartment was cold. Every time he walked in, her could smell her light perfume, clinging to the air. But it was the minor details that scratched at him (ate at him, gnawed at his memory) – bright red nail polish in the cracks of bathroom tiles; silver, four-inch heels in the closet, unused and shining new; biros throughout the rooms, the ends chewed from when she was nervous or excited (or awake).

But Danny goes to work, goes to the store, to the bar. Danny talks to Harry and Adam and Ruth. He grabs his post, the newspaper, a cup of coffee. He lives his life in circles – get up, wash, eat, work, eat, work, drink, eat, sleep – on and on until he can barely discern if he's awake or if he's asleep.

And always there – always ticking in the back of his mind – is her: Zoe, Zoe, Zoe…

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The next five years are awkward, like somebody tried to push the canvas together (tried oh-so hard to rebind the fibres, to knot them, haphazardly, back together). Now there are less of them than there have ever been before and there is no cohesion to the unit. (Only unspoken words and silent, accusing eyes).

Adam does what he's told to do (and sometimes what he's not) and every day, he does what he needs to in order to keep sane. There's an all-pervading fear that maybe one day his number will be called and someone will cut the cord (sever all ties, break off all contact). So he does his job, loves his wife and stands in the doorway of his son's room, watching the child breathe in gentle oblivion.

Perhaps he'll end up like Tom, confused and bitter. Perhaps he'll be like Zoe, betrayed by the country and cheated by the team (because he knows she was cheated and this preys on him, finds on his mind pecking and biting and digging at him). Or perhaps he'll be like that other officer, the one before him and Tom and Zoe. Perhaps he'll be like Tessa, disillusioned and corrupt, thrown away out of necessity – years of service and honour and duty all messed up into mixed politics, petty dispute and humiliating disrepute.

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Years eight to twenty five and the cycle has been completed _n _times over. If you take the number of officers, divide it into fragments and then rebuild from a fraction of the whole, how many officers did you lose? Because now there are no old faces and there is no common ground save that there are yet more spies and yet more spin and even when they should have been happy, those who love the job the most are still subject (victim) to the same ploys as before.

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In the end, Zoe made it to the beach. She got a job, found a husband and had a daughter (two, in fact). She sat on the sand and looked out to the sea, looked out to the choppy waters where once Tom had cut into the murky depths, cold and afraid and utterly alone. She found herself thinking of them every day – Danny and Tom and Harry (Adam and Ruth and Colin; Sam and Tessa) and all those others who came and went in a flash of yarn and millions of threads, all coming undone. She thought of them and sometimes, she cried.

Then she'd dry her eyes and move on.

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Time is a funny thing. Because with enough time and enough people (enough secrets, deceit and hate), one group of people can become a hundred thousand strangers with nothing but memories, dashed dreams and iced, dry scotch, burning throats like slowly unravelled silk.

And in the end, all they have to show for it are tears.

**FIN**


End file.
